Real Housewives will air as planned –with suicide prevention tips

Question: What could be more cynical than the humans-behaving-badly genre of “reality tv” shows?
Answer: The appropriation of a suicide prevention alert by such a reality tv show, after one of its cast members has committed suicide.

Bravo announced today it will proceed with the season premiere of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” next week as planned. There had been rumblings that the network would postpone the season after Russell Armstrong’s suicide. Some said the network should cancel the season in light of some of Taylor Armstrong’s storylines.

“Bravo will proceed with the Monday, Sept. 5 premiere date of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” Frances Berwick, president of Bravo Media, said in a statement. “Given that these episodes were filmed months ago, the producers of the show taped a brief interview this week with several of the cast members to introduce the premiere. Re-editing of the episodes is still underway.”

Russell Armstrong, who had taped several episodes, is expected to be edited out of the hours Bravo will telecast.

The “Housewives” show is typical of the train-wreck style of “reality” television, offering giant helpings of dysfunction for the public’s gawking pleasure. Sometimes dangerous dysfunction. Like any gladiatorial contest, people watch half hoping for an implosion. It seems a broken family dynamic, heightened by financial troubles and the pressure of living up to the moneyed expectations set by the show, led to Armstrong’s taking his life. The producers, the network, the advertisers, the on-screen players–plus anyone who watched–must share in the responsibility for this tragedy.

How far will reality TV go? When will it end? It won’t end, not until the public turns it off. And generations of carnival barkers know that will not happen.

The best we can do is make a personal decision not to participate.

One last irony: the “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” season premiere is slated during National Suicide Prevention Week (Sept. 4-10).

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Joanne Ostrow has been watching TV since before "reality" required quotation marks. "Hill Street Blues" was life-changing. If Dickens, Twain or Agatha Christie were alive today, they'd be writing for television. And proud of it.